


Marauder's Quest

by Zephyrfox



Series: Marauder's Quest [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, They fixed it, what do they do now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-06-03 15:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19466809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephyrfox/pseuds/Zephyrfox
Summary: After a visit to Dumbledore to discuss the events at Godric's Hollow, Remus returned to his friends - his family - to tell them what he suspected. Voldemort might not be as dead as they thought, and they needed to prepare.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I had this idea while I was finishing If I Could Find a Way...

Remus came out of the flue in a cloud of ash. He stepped out onto the hearth of the small sitting room and through the wards, then cast a quick cleaning charm. Of course his family were nowhere to be seen — he needed to see them. He hurried through the room and into the hallway of the ‘small’ hunting lodge James’ father had gifted him with when he turned 18. Remus had tried to protest the gift, but Mr Potter had insisted that he needed a safe place for full moons. He had to be grateful to the old man; the lodge made a perfect place for them to lie low after the attack on the cottage.

 _Where would they be?_ Their scents were all through the lodge at this point, so it was no good trying to track anyone that way. He inhaled deeply, though. Something appetizing was cooking in the kitchen, and his stomach rumbled. _Later,_ he sternly told himself, and turned towards the left. The library had become a comfortable place for them to gather. He strode down the hall, hearing voices through the heavy door.

“It’s me,” he said as he pushed the door open. He had to smile at the sight before him, despite his feeling of urgency. Sirius was playing on the floor with Harry — and Harry’s toys. “You have more fun with those than he does, Padfoot.”

“Bite me, Moony,” Sirius said, not bothering to take his attention from his game.

“You can’t blame him, you know,” Lily said, looking up from the book she was reading. ”They _are_ basically the same age.”

James came into the room behind him, which meant he had been the one overseeing their lunch. “Who are the same age?” 

Remus nodded towards the two on the floor, and James grinned, passing him on the way to Lily. 

“You have to admit she’s right,” James said, leaning over the back of her chair to give her a quick kiss.

“All I get is disrespect,” Sirius huffed. He leaned toward Harry. “You respect me, don’t you, Prongslet?”

Harry bopped Sirius in the face with a stuffed dog. “Pa’foo’!”

Remus bit his lip to keep from laughing with the others. He really wanted to let this happy moment stretch on, but he had news, and he didn’t think Harry should hear. “Can you put up a privacy bubble around Harry? I need to tell you —”

Lily sat up, eyes sharp. “What did Dumbledore say?”

Sirius cast a moving charm on one of Harry’s toys to keep him busy, and leaned his back against the couch. No doubt wanting to stay close to their cub so he didn’t get upset at the sudden lack of attention from the adults. James cast the privacy bubble, then sat on the arm of Lily’s chair.

Remus heaved a sigh. He wasn’t looking forward to this. “We were right. There’s a price on Sirius’ head for telling Voldemort where the cottage was, so he could kill you.” A snort told him what Sirius thought of that, and Remus flashed him a lop-sided grin, agreeing with him, before sobering. “There’s more. Dumbledore said Harry was in a safe place, and that I mustn’t try to contact him. Ever.” He waited out his friends as they all talked over each other.

“What?” Sirius shook his head as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Say that again, Moony.”

James scoffed. “How can that be? That was Doppel-Harry. It’s dissolved into its component parts by now.”

 _“Why would he forbid you to see Harry?”_ Lily asked coldly, her voice rising above the rest as her eyes flashed dangerously.

Remus wanted to take a step back when faced with Lily’s fury, despite knowing that he wasn't her target. He held his hands up, “He said it was to protect Harry.”

“That’s ridiculous. Our wills clearly state that you get Harry if something happens to Sirius after we die,” James said, sounding baffled. “Especially since —” 

“Frank and Alice are… unavailable,” Lily said, her green eyes boring into Remus’ as if she somehow knew what Dumbledore had done. “They would have been the next option _after_ you.” 

“I don’t think your wills have been read at all.” Remus waited out the subsequent explosion. That didn’t go over any better between James and Lily. Sirius’s face closed off, in a way that Remus knew meant his friend was planning retribution. “You haven’t heard the most important part.”

“And what’s that?” Lily’s voice was as cold as the arrival of a Dementor.

“I think…” Remus thought back to the books he’d seen open in Dumbledore’s office. He’d put the clues together, and dreaded telling them what he’d figured out. “He believes that the Harry he has survived the Killing Curse because of his mother’s love. He had a book about blood wards open —”

“Petunia,” James said, his voice hard. “Blood wards need blood relatives.”

Lily looked up at him and took his hand. “Even if the Doppel-Harry is somehow still active, my sister and that horrible man she married are the two people we said should never get our son.”

“There’s more,” Remus said, turning towards the one person in the room who might know what he meant. “He also had a book on Horcruxes on his desk, and a close-up drawing of the scar on Doppel-Harry’s forehead.”

Sirius paled, shaking his head slowly. “That can’t be right, Moony. Not even Voldemort would —”

“Would what, Sirius?” Lily demanded. “What wouldn’t he do?” 

“There’s a set of Dark spells designed to prolong a wizard’s life by splitting pieces of his soul. It requires death to power.” Sirius paused, shrugging. “I suppose the Death Eaters’s deaths could have provided the energy for the spell.”

 _“Could_ a piece of Voldemort’s soul lodge in the Doppel-Harry?” Remus pressed. “That seems to be what Dumbledore thinks. He doesn’t know about the doppelgänger. Would that piece of soul keep it alive?”

“I don’t know,” Sirius answered slowly, “but if it did…” He looked towards James and Lily.

“We need to get Doppel-Harry back and find out,” James said firmly.

”But if it’s animated by a piece of Voldemort’s sole,” Remus began hesitantly, “are we morally obligated —”

Lily cut Remus off with a sharp wave of her hand. “That’s not important. If he’s alive, we’ll raise the child. My question is,” she paused, looking each of them in the eye. “If Voldemort split his soul once, how many more times has he done it?”

Remus shivered as the room seemed to become colder and darker with Lily’s words. 

“We’ll get the other Harry,” Sirius began, his voice sure. “We’ll raise the boys together.”

“We’ll hunt the other Horcruxes,” James added, nodding at Sirius.

“And then we’ll destroy them,” Lily finished, determination flashing in her eyes.

Remus felt a chill go down his back as he witnessed his friends — his family — make their vows. It was almost as though some power or deity watching over them accepted their quest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James, Lily, Sirius, and Remus discuss the situation. What should they do about Harry’s Doppelgänger, and how do they get him away from Petunia and Vernon? The Marauders have a quest, and they don’t plan on failing.

After they made their vows, the room fell quiet. Even Harry stopped playing and looked uncertainly at his parents. Remus hesitated, unsure what to do, but Sirius scooped Harry up and cuddled him, incidentally dispelling the privacy bubble. Remus caught the moving toy Harry had been playing with, and muttered a quick _“finite incantatem”_ on it.

Sirius stood and put Harry in Lily’s lap, looking as though he wanted to sit there too. Remus didn’t question the relationship between his three friends, but sometimes… he wondered. In the end, Sirius sat on the floor, his back against Lily’s legs. James’ smile turned fond as he watched his wife, son, and best friend, and he put his hand on Lily’s shoulder when she leaned into him.

“I think it’s time for your nap, young man,” Lily said to Harry.

Rather predictably, Remus thought, Harry protested the idea. “No nap! Not s’eepy!”

“Not sleepy, hmm? Well, maybe I’ll just sing to you for a bit, would that be all right?”

Harry blinked up at his mother as he considered that. Finally, he stuck his thumb in his mouth and snuggled into Lily’s arms. “’Kay.” 

Lily smiled at him she began to sing.

James leaned over, adding his deep voice to the lullaby. Harry’s eyes drooped, although he forced them open a time or two. Sirius looked around the room, as though looking for something. Then his eyes locked on Remus.

Remus hid a shiver, unsettled by the odd shadow in Sirius’ gray eyes. What was that about? But Sirius’ gaze moved on, finally coming to a rest on Harry’s forgotten toys. Remus resolved to talk to Sirius when they were done. By unspoken agreement, they waited for Harry to fall asleep. It wasn’t healthy to cast too many spells on a young child, after all. 

Remus summoned one of the other chairs — he had a feeling they would be here for a while. As he sat, he instinctively looked to James, who had taken the lead in so many of their pranks. Sure enough, James looked as though he was planning something. Good, because Remus had no idea what to do.

After Harry fell asleep, the tension in the room returned, until James sat up, drawing everyone’s attention. “Right, then,” James said firmly. “First things first. We need to find out if the other Harry is aware, and if he is — does he have a soul?”

The question of the Doppel-Harry’s soul nagged at Remus. He’d been raised rather vaguely Anglican, thanks to his mother’s influence and his father’s indifference. He had ended up familiar with quite a few religions, but no particular belief in any of them. One thing he knew, though — the soul or spirit, whatever one wanted to call it, existed. “If it’s a piece of Voldemort’s soul,” he said hesitantly. “Can we — or should we — destroy it?” He caught Sirius’ sharp glance.

“Creating a Horcrux takes dark magic, Moony,” Sirius said. “Destroying one can be just as dark.”

_“Can_ be?” Remus jumped on the words. Sirius was the only one of them that knew about Horcruxes. “But not always?”

Lily cut Sirius off before he could answer. “If the Doppel-Harry is alive, we’re not destroying anything.” Her lips thinned before she continued. “Even if it _is_ a piece of Voldemort.”

“But what if it’s evil?” Remus hated to ask these questions, but someone had to. Lily wouldn’t. James would follow Lily’s lead, and Sirius — 

“Souls aren’t naturally good or evil. What if this piece isn’t… tainted? Will you still want to destroy him, Remus?”

For all Sirius’ bad boy image, he had a huge heart. Remus drew a breath, wanting to argue, but then stopped. He raised a questioning brow at James and Lily. It really had to be their decision. He’d made his objections. 

James just shrugged, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. 

Lily, however, was sure. “We bring him home, and then we see,” she said, her tone final.

“He’ll need a different name,” Sirius said quietly, still watching the spot where Harry had been playing. 

Remus frowned. He could see all this ending in tears. “Why name him now? We should wait until after we know if he’s, well, alive.”

“Damn it, Remus. Sod whether he’s aware or alive. Sirius has a point. We we can’t keep calling him Other Harry or Doppel Harry,” Lily said.

Just as quietly as before, as if he didn’t care about their response, Sirius asked, “How about Regulus?”

James squeezed Lily’s shoulder and went kneel down next to his best friend. “Your brother’s name?”

Sirius nodded, his face oddly intent as he looked back at James.

Remus shifted in his chair, feeling uncomfortably like a voyeur at this moment between the two friends. 

James smiled softly, looking over Sirius’ shoulder at Lily. “Regulus Sirius Potter. It has a certain ring to it.”

“I like it.” Lily smiled back with an approving nod. “Harry and Reggie.”

Sirius’s shoulders lost their tension, a relieved smile spreading over his face.

Remus suppressed a sigh. None of them wanted to face the unpleasant prospect that either the doppel was only half alive, or worse, that the piece of Voldemort’s soul was truly evil. “But what if Dop — I mean Reggie, isn’t actually aware?”

“That brings us back to the main point,” James said. “We need to get Reggie and test him.”

Remus forced himself to relax. Maybe his worries would turn out to be baseless after all. “How will we do that?”

James stood up, grinning. “One of us will have to go see Petunia and Vernon in disguise. I have some polyjuice potion brewing.”

“You just ‘happen’ to have polyjuice potion brewing?” Lily asked, looking up at her husband suspiciously.

James shrugged, the picture of innocence. “You never know when it might come in handy. Like now!”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Yes, all right, you have a point.”

“I’ve got some occu-orbs,” Sirius offered, sounding happier than he’d been since Remus had made his announcement. “They’re almost invisible, and we can see what’s going on in there without anyone knowing. The Muggles will never notice.”

Instead of showing outrage at spying on her sister, Lily’s lips curved into a sly smile. “I can pretend to be someone Petunia will fall all over herself to impress, and check the place out in person.”

A look of pride came into James’ eyes. “You’d pull that off brilliantly, love.”

Ah well. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I, erm… I have some hairs from Niobe Norrington — you remember her, Ravenclaw prefect a year or so above ours?” Remus could feel his ears growing red as the other three stared at him. “From, erm… “

“I remember her,” Lily said, breaking the sudden silence. “She’s perfect. I can play snooty neighbour or something.” She tilted her head and regarded him knowingly. “But don’t think you’re getting out of a long discussion about how you happen to have those hairs.”

Sirius regarded him with an odd expression as well. “As red as he’s getting, maybe we should ask what hairs —“

“Sirius!” Lily said sharply. “No.”

_Oh, shit._ Remus felt the blush spreading out over his face.

* * *

In the end, Lily went to visit her sister and brother-in-law with conjured documents identifying her as Naomi Norton, from the Department of Child Well-Being. (“It’s not impersonating a government official if it’s not a real governmental department,” she had said as they were planning.)

She wasn’t worried that Petunia might recognize her. That was the whole point of polyjuice potion, after all. Niobe, and therefore Naomi, was a smidge shorter than Lily, with brown eyes and dark curling hair. Today, Lily had pulled Niobe’s hair into chignon and wore a severe pants suit with bold shoulder pads. With a look like that, her sister would be impressed and Lily would be able to assert her non-existent authority.

James and Remus had been ridiculous before she left, and left it to Sirius to see her off. James hadn’t wanted to kiss her goodbye looking like Niobe, in case Remus got upset. Remus, of course, didn’t want to be anywhere near her, in case James got jealous. _Men._ Sirius had just hugged her, kissed her forehead, and wished her luck before apparating out himself.

She apparated close to the Dursley home and walked toward it, her high heels clacking briskly along the pavement. She passed a large black dog scavenging amongst the refuse bins and forced herself to ignore him. Sirius, as Padfoot, had been hanging around the neighborhood of Little Whinging to observe Petunia, Vernon, and the boys. His report had concerned them all. 

He hadn’t liked the feel of the blood wards around the house, though he hadn’t been able to explain why.

The occu-orb had shown them a family of three that excluded the newcomer in their midst. Remus and James had been furious at meal times, when Petunia fed her own son Dudley carefully cut up bits of food at the table, while she simply handed the little boy she believed to be her nephew a piece of buttered bread with a slice of cheese. Sirius had growled when they saw Vernon yelling at the boy until he cried, just for spilling a glass of milk. Lily had been infuriated when her sister and brother-in-law both called the boy ‘freak’.

She paused when she got close to the house, all magical senses extended. Powerful wards protected the place, and she could recognize some of it as Dumbledore’s work. The rest, though… The blood wards had spread through and around the protective wards like a spider’s web, pulsing a deep reddish brown against the silvery light of Dumbledore's wards. At the points where the different wards touched, they became a sullen black. 

She shivered. She could tell why Sirius had been suspicious of the blood wards. There was something… unwholesome about them. As she got closer, she could feel them reaching out to her, recognizing her as belonging to the household through the blood she shared with Petunia and the boys. She could also feel something… insidious about them. She shivered again. Dread’s cold fingers seemed to be creeping into her soul. 

She pushed the feeling away and focused on her mission. What was she here for? Oh yes, to see Petunia and Dudley. Wasn’t she? Lily frowned. That wasn’t quite it, but why wouldn’t she want to see her sister and nephew? She knew she didn’t want to see her brother-in-law. Vernon Dursley thought she and her husband were… What had he said? Freaks, wasn’t it, like he’d called that little boy she’d seen on the occu-orb. Intense disgust and dislike filled her as she thought about the little boy. But that was wrong, wasn’t it? 

Lily stepped back, out of range of the wards, and took a deliberate breath, shaken to her core. What _was_ that? She was here to discover whether the doppelgänger truly was alive and aware, and to bring him home with her if he was. That the wards tried to make her forget about him… something was definitely wrong there. She cast a charm to ward her thoughts against the blood wards’ influence. If Petunia and Vernon were being influenced by that… _evil,_ maybe they weren’t to blame after all? She considered that, and what she knew about the two. No, Petunia and Vernon had always been small-minded and unpleasant. The blood wards would simply have given them an unneeded push.

She took a moment to get back into the proper mindset: Naomi Norton, a somewhat underpaid and overworked government official, but professional and passionate about her work. Back straight, head up, and she was ready to go. Lily stepped forward towards the house, her heels clacking briskly against the pavement once more. 

* * *

Petunia hadn’t wanted to let her in, but Lily had insisted and her sister had eventually caved. Apparently Petunia had been impressed enough by Naomi Norton’s credentials that they were seated in the living room, with cups of tea in front of them. The two boys were there — Dudley playing with toys, and ‘Harry’ stuck in a playpen watching forlornly, with no toys in sight.

Lily had looked into his eyes and she’d seen the intelligence there in the green eyes that were a twin of her son’s. The boy’s air of confused sadness made her determined to get him out of the house as soon as she could manage.

“What did you want again?” Petunia asked her again with a slightly puzzled frown. 

“To see your nephew. Harry, isn’t it?” Lily repeated patiently. They’d had this conversation twice now. The blood wards made it difficult for Petunia to keep her nephew’s existence in mind, except for when he was in front of her, when she seemed to become inexplicably angry at him. The blood wards’ influence.

“Oh, yes. The frea—” Petunia cut herself off, evidently remembering that Lily had had some sharp words earlier about verbally abusing her nephew. 

Lily pursed her lips, trying to maintain her composure. The plan, Lils. Remember the plan, she told herself.

“What do you want to know? He’s an orphan,” Petunia sneered. “His drunk of a father got himself and my fool sister killed. Drink driving, you know.”

Lily sat up straight, shocked at the story and her sister’s nastiness. Was Petunia actually going to tell Harry that as he grew up? Oh, sod the plan. “Obliviate!”

She very carefully stood, rigidly keeping herself under control, because all she wanted was to rage at her sister and break every damn thing in the house. She passed her nephew — Dudley hadn’t even looked up from his toys — and went to the playpen. She knelt so that she was looking directly into the lost green eyes. “Hello there, what’s your name?”

The little boy looked at her, his brows drawing together into a tiny look of confusion. “F’weak?” 

Damning her sister, her brother-in-law, and Dumbledore’s blood wards to hell, Lily said, “I don’t think that’s your name, sweetie. How do you like the name Reggie?”

“Me?” the newly named Reggie asked, his eyes going wide.

“You,” Lily confirmed. She stood, bending over the playpen to pick him up. He stiffened just a bit at her touch, but as she put him on her hip he relaxed, leaning into her side and holding onto her jacket with his chubby baby hands. “Now we’re going home, and you’ll never have to worry about your aunt and uncle again.”

“Weggie home?”

“Yes.” She carried Reggie out of the house, knowing better than to apparate anywhere near Dumbledore’s wards. Once outside, on the pavement in front of the house, she met the big black dog’s eyes. He looked from her to Reggie, then obediently followed at her heels as she strode toward their apparition point. She glanced down fondly at the dog, then proceeded to tell Reggie all about his brother, his father, his uncles, and all the things they’d do together.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr - you can find me at leavesdancing.tumblr.com


End file.
